THANK YOU, ALL OF YOU—HUMAN AND ANDROID ALIKE! YOU MADE IT HAPPEN! METROPO eight stories from the unending city is funded!

Thanks to you, we've also reached our stretch goal, and can now print the book with unique details, making it a proper gorgeous book to hold in your hands!

We're still hunting 400 backers, though, to unlock the final backer bonus for you all—so bring your friend into the unending city, as well!

NEW HERE? READ ABOUT THE BOOK FURTHER DOWN

Welcome to Metropo with its gleaming spires and forgotten depths. A city so vast and dense it almost feels alive. Artificial or otherwise, its denizens struggle with familiar heartache and tackle questions we are only beginning to ask.

This ‘slice of cyberpunk life’ collection takes us into the hearts and minds of these denizens, presenting eight stories from the lives of those in the unending city.

WHY//KICKSTARTER

Because of you! We have the opportunity to link up directly to your brain, whether you are android or human (or somewhere in between). Not only do we want to give you a memorable cyberpunk sci-fi experience, but, if you so choose, a top-of-the-line physical book to hold and cherish. We are children of rampant digitalisation, but we are firm believers in the exquisiteness of a good ol’ printed book.

The stories, the art and the design, are all completed and the book is ready to go to print. Eight lyrical and haunting 'slice of life' cyberpunk stories, coated in a design even a malevolent AI could love.

We have all worked hard to build and wire the stories contained within METROPO, and by coming to Kickstarter we hope to raise funds for the printing and distribution of a book that you will be proud to have sitting on your shelves. In addition to the regular book we have a premium citizenship slipcase edition at a higher pledge level.

When the campaign is successful we have our warehouse-bots and digiworms raring to go to deliver METROPO eight stories from the unending city right to your doorstep or your inbox. This, of course, falls to you dear citizen. Plug in and pledge to one of our rewards and tell your friends, your synthetic companion, or your android neighbour all about it!

To crunch some numbers for all you sentient account algorithms out there, the breakdown of the campaign budget looks like this:

We would like to express our gratitude to the Norwegian Arts Council and their branch Fond For Lyd og Bilde for the grant that made the art production of this book possible. If not for them, this pie chart, and financing this book, would be impossible.

PRINTING//SHIPPING

We're partnering with a tried and trusted megacorporation from Sector 5 in Metropo—KrakenPrint. Our HQ have used them for both printing and fulfilment for the Spiral Kickstarter campaign, as well as printing the Earthlock one-shot comic. With more than satisfactory results.

SOCIAL//MEDIA

All Metropo visitors and citizens, artificial or otherwise, are encouraged to join the construction of the unending city on our newsletter & social media sites.

CREATORS//

Magnus Aspli // A robot from Norway who has written comics and screenplays for nearly a decade. Magnus is currently working on building Metropo on several fronts, while also being involved in a few film and TV projects, plus a game. He’s been shipped and updated at universities in both Brisbane and London, but now lives in Trondheim with his family, raising kids and raising hell.

Vivian Truong // Vivian says she’s a short Chinese artist from London, but as you can tell, she might be a digital self-representation of a cartoon character. Rumour claims she’s a rogue AI, but the fun and benevolent kind. Vivian has a Patreon you could hack into to discover more of her work.

Mary (Cryoclaire) Safro // Mary is a Russian cyber-junkie comic artist, saving the Queen in the UK. She’s the co-creator of Drugs & Wires. A retro-90s Eastern cyberpunk webcomic about everything going wrong. It updates on Mondays and you should head back to the 90s to check it out.

John Jamtli // John is our cover artist. He’s a wide-ranging illustrator mainly working in comics. His most recent work is Sabotør [saboteur]—a historical romp behind the scenes of a controversial part of the resistance movement in Norway during the Nazi Occupation of WWII—which’ll be out in spring 2018. Unfortunately, for most of you, it’s in Norwegian. Fortunately, for all of you, it looks absolutely stunning. Follow John on Instagram for more.

Emerson Dimaya // Emerson is our spot architect, putting the spice in our Metropo book soup. He has traveled the megalopolis and made some sketches from his dronetaxi and on foot.
Emerson’s an illustrator and comic book artist from the Philippines. He’s the artist on Spiral and the Earthlock comic book.

Rob Croonenborghs // Rob is from Belgium and one of the builders of Metropo. His rough and organic style a lovely and ironic juxtaposition to the perfect system in his story Automobile. (We suspect Rob is actually a generative design AI prototype.) You can find more of Rob’s comics on Comixology and more of his art on DeviantArt.

Naomi Franquiz // Naomi, according to her neural net, is a freelance illustrator, comic artist, and reprobate. (We’re still not sure if she’s an android or not.) She built Every Moment is a Moment Forward—the final short comic in Metropo—with her brilliant flavour and style.
Make sure to check out her comic Misfit City, published by Boom! And do point your cybernetic eyes on her tumblr!

Dan Hill // Dan is the hidden architect behind the facade of Metropo. A writer and editor, Dan is making sure all is well with the book and that every story, every sentence, every word, is its best hologram of the intended idea.

Dan has edited titles such as DeerEditor, Headspace, MitchHammer and BlackCanvas from Black Mask Studios. His one-shot comic Go Home, together with Andrew Herbst, about how war haunts us, is available on Comixology. You can find Dan on Twitter and you can jump on his newsletter A Pleasurable Headachehere.

SPECIAL//THANKS

A special thanks to the Norwegian Arts Council for initial funding. To my collaborators in this book. To Jacob & KrakenPrint. To Aaron Marshall for the music. To Sander and Pekka for being part of building another quadrant of Metropo. To Breach VR for curiosity and possibly a unique future. To WorkWork for a creative environment and inspiration. To my family for patience, love and gravity. To all those of you who have assisted in wiring and adjusting this book into one piece, with feedback and sharp minds. You know who you are.

HOW DOES KICKSTARTER WORK?

For those of you who have recently uploaded your consciousness to the Internet and are new to Kickstarter, a few pointers:

Money from your card/account will be withdrawn only after the campaign ends and only if it's successful. Repeat: If we don't reach our goal, no money will be transferred. It's an all or nothing game. You can change your pledge at any point until the campaign ends. Changed your mind and want to pick a lower reward or a higher reward? Go for it. Any questions, just message me right here on Kickstarter. Click that Contact Me next to my profile picture, and I'll try to respond asap.

Risks and challenges

The book is finished so the only hurdles are to get it printed and shipped to you. We're working with KrakenPrint, a professional printing and distribution superintelligence, so everything will run smoothly and efficiently.

Delays in shipping with both printing and distribution of rewards might occur due to elements outside of our control, of course. Malevolent hackers, a buggy automated shipping vessel, a global EMP bomb or worse. If any problems do occur we'll do our best to fix it as soon as possible. By human brainpower and artificial superintelligence combined.